


Symptomatic

by Scrawlers



Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Anime)
Genre: C-PTSD, Complex Post Traumatic-Stress Disorder, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Papa Sycamore, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-20
Updated: 2016-10-20
Packaged: 2018-08-23 15:45:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8333287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scrawlers/pseuds/Scrawlers
Summary: The effects of abuse don't magically disappear once your abuser is dead, and not all trauma nightmares involve disasters or events that actually happened. It has been a little while since the Flare crisis ended, but for Alan, it feels as if it never did.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was written with the following headcanons in mind:
> 
> \- Professor Sycamore unofficially adopted Alan when Alan was five;  
> \- Alan worked for Lysandre for two years (from ages 13-15);  
> \- Alan nicknamed his charmander (now charizard) Lizardon;  
> \- Professor Sycamore nicknamed his garchomp Gabrielle, and yes, she sometimes goes grocery shopping.

The manila folder Alan carried out into the yard with him was filled with charts containing data on the numerous pokémon they currently had staying with them at the lab. More specifically, it contained daily data pertaining to the fluctuations in their overall behavior and health accounting for new vitamin supplements that some of them had started taking, versus those that hadn’t started taking it yet. That day’s data hadn’t been collected yet, and though the sun over the yard was so bright that it made him squint as he looked at the charts stapled to the inside of the manila folder, Alan still made his way out to the middle of the yard and squatted down on the grass, pencil in hand, knowing that the pokémon—or at least a good number of them, such as the resident psyduck and their little squad of azurill—were bound to flock to him within minutes, if not seconds, if he did. Sure enough, though he looked down at the charts in his folder for a second, in the next beat he looked up to see the resident linoone and two of the azurill bounding across the grass toward him, a couple of combee flying quickly behind them. Despite the brightness (and odd lack of warmth) of the sun still stinging his eyes, Alan smiled.

“Alan. Are you not finished with that yet?”

The voice was sudden, deep, and unwelcome; it sent a shiver like a thunderclap through Alan and trapped his breath in his lungs, and when he spun around and shot to his feet he stumbled over the hem of his lab coat, even though it wasn’t long enough for him to step on.  Standing there just before him in the yard was Lysandre, his expression neutral if not for the cold, calculating look in his eyes as he surveyed Alan.

 _He shouldn’t be here_ , Alan thought, as his hands shook and rattled the papers in the manila folder along with them. _He shouldn’t . . ._ But even as the words crossed his mind, he knew they were wrong. Lysandre . . . was supposed to be here, wasn’t he? He . . . lived here now, didn’t he . . . ?

“Alan,” Lysandre said, and still his tone was even, but Alan had known him for enough years to recognize the command—the hint of impatience—the thread of warning in his tone.

“I—” Alan’s voice cracked due to how dry his throat was, and he swallowed to try and force some strength into it. But he couldn’t muster any; his voice abandoned him and his heart hammered in his chest with enough force and speed to make him feel a little sick, and so as much as he wanted to point out that he had only just started, that it would take him a bit more time, that he would be done soon, that he was sorry it was taking so long, the most he could do was shake his head _no_.

Lysandre sighed, an action only perceptible by the slight rise and fall of his shoulders. He crossed his arms over his chest.

“You realize you’re employed here for a reason,” he said. “You’ve been entrusted with certain tasks because it was thought you would be capable of doing them, and doing them well. Was that trust misplaced?”

Alan’s throat still felt too choked to speak, and so he once again shook his head in answer. He tore his eyes away from Lysandre to look around the yard. The linoone, azurill, and combee were all still gathered around him, though they were all watching the unfolding scene with calm, if not a bit curious, expressions. To them, this was normal, and Alan supposed that made sense. It _was_ normal now, now that he had . . . now that Lysandre was here because of him, and so it made sense that they weren’t bothered by it—that they saw no issue with Lysandre’s presence there. But that was them—what about—what about Lizardon? Where was—?

 _No_ , he thought, as his eyes scanned the yard and didn’t find a hint of orange scales or burning tail flame in sight. _I can’t involve him in this._ Lizardon had already suffered enough due to Alan’s involvement with Lysandre. There was no need to drag him back in now, no need to make him suffer more just because Alan had screwed up so badly that Lysandre was living there with them at the—

“Are you ignoring me?”

Alan jumped, feeling like the world’s most pitiful idiot as his attention snapped back to Lysandre, whose stare was now unmistakably cold and irritated. He shook his head again, though he could tell from the way that Lysandre’s eyes narrowed that his lie—however unintentional—wasn’t convincing.

“I’m sorry,” Alan managed to say, though Lysandre’s icy stare didn’t waver. “I—it won’t happen again.”

“What won’t happen again? Didn’t you just say you weren’t ignoring me?” Lysandre asked. Alan had no response—none that would be in any way good enough or acceptable, at the very least—and Lysandre shook his head, his tone adopting a note of light disgust. “You have work to do. I expect nothing less than the best. If you can’t manage that—if you fail—you will be dismissed. Understood?”

A nonverbal answer wouldn’t suffice this time. Alan swallowed again, and squeezed both the manila folder and his pen so hard that his hands hurt and the folder crumpled a bit in his fist. “Yes, Director,” he said.

“Good.” Lysandre uncrossed his arms, evidently satisfied, and turned as if to head back inside.

The sight of this made a jolt of panic so strong it left him a bit lightheaded shoot through Alan. This was—no, he couldn’t do that. Lysandre couldn’t do that. If he went inside, then the Professor—he would see the Professor, and even though—even though Alan knew that Lysandre was living here now, and had _been_ living here because of his irredeemable mistakes, he couldn’t remember . . . he couldn’t remember if the Professor . . .

“Director!” he said, and Lysandre paused and turned halfway to look back. Alan had reached out to him with the hand still holding the pen, and he lowered his arm back to his side as their eyes met. “Does . . . the Professor know you’re here?”

Lysandre surveyed him for a moment, silent, before he said, “Didn’t I say the Professor needed to be protected?”

“Yes,” Alan said, even though that felt wrong, for some reason. That was what Alan had thought, why he had stayed away, but now he was here—he had come home, so didn’t that mean—?

“Well then, who will protect him from you if not me?” Lysandre asked.

The answer was simple, yet striking enough so that Alan’s fingers went slack, both folder and pen falling from his limp fingers and onto the grass. Alan couldn’t think of a response. Lysandre was—right, of course. He was right. The Professor did need to be protected from him, obviously did, because he—how could he explain this? How could he explain any of it? How could he explain any of what he had done over the past two years, all the mistakes he had made—mistake, after mistake, after mistake, and everyone he loved (and so many people and pokémon he didn’t even know) getting hurt because of him . . .

Lysandre’s lips curled into a satisfied smile, and he turned once again to head back inside.

Alan couldn’t stop trembling; it was difficult to breathe. He shut his eyes and wrapped his arms around himself, knowing that even as he did it wasn’t as if he could shut the reality of the situation out, wasn’t as if any of it would ever go away, wasn’t as if he would ever, _ever_ be free, even if he deserved to be. He was shaking worse than ever, as if he was standing in the middle of a turbulent windstorm instead of the calm yard, or as if—as if someone had grabbed hold of his shoulders, and was purposefully shaking—

“Alan! Hey, Alan!”

Alan’s eyes shot open and he sucked in a sharp breath, scrambling up and away from the hand clutching his shoulder. Disoriented as he was, it took him a moment to realize that he was not standing in the yard, but rather lying on the sofa in the living room. The manila folder containing the charts he had been filling out had been tossed onto the coffee table along with his pen, and the hand on his shoulder—and the voice that had called out to him—belonged to the Professor, not Lysandre. Alan sat up properly on the sofa, and scrubbed his rubbery eyes with the heels of his palms as his frantic pulse slowed. He was—he was in the living room. It was still daylight outside, so not much time could have passed, but he—he was—

“Sorry,” he said, and he cleared his throat to try and force the sleep-laden, raspy quality from it. “Was I—I didn’t disturb you, did I?”

“No. You have a tendency toward being quiet even the midst of having a nightmare,” the Professor said, and though he smiled faintly as he sat down on the couch next to Alan, he looked more concerned than amused. “But I can still tell. It isn’t exactly typical for people to hyperventilate while sleeping, after all.”

Sleeping. He had fallen asleep. Now that he had been awake for a minute, and his panic attack had loosened its vice grip on his thoughts by a fraction, he recalled that he _had_ already completed the morning charts on the control group taking the vitamin supplements, and that he had decided to relax on the sofa while he looked over the results to see if there had been any changes throughout the week. He had already done that, but his inability to get more than four hours of sleep at the most each night had left him exhausted, and so despite the sunlight still shining in from the windows, when he had allowed himself to recline back on the sofa and look over the data, he had . . .

“Sorry,” he said again, because even if he hadn’t shouted or made any noise during his nightmare, it wasn’t as if he was supposed to be sleeping on the job. It was his fault for not sleeping decently at night.

The Professor, on the other hand, shook his head. “You don’t have to apologize. It’s like I said, you weren’t disturbing anyone. More importantly, are you all right? That seemed to be some nightmare you were having.”

Alan wrapped his arms loosely around his stomach, and tore his eyes away from the manila folder so that he could look across the room instead. The folder hadn’t done anything wrong, and the data inside was important, but at the moment, looking at it just made him feel nauseous.

“No,” he said after a moment. “I mean, it wasn’t—it wasn’t really a . . . nightmare. Not a normal one, anyway.”

“Not a normal one?”

“I wasn’t being attacked, or chased by a murderer, or—anything like that. There were no monsters, no demons . . .” At least, none of the typical sort, but Alan didn’t think it was exactly the time to get metaphorical. “It was just—it’s stupid.”

“If it bothers you, then it isn’t stupid,” the Professor said. “Do you want to tell me about it? Sometimes that can help.”

Alan rubbed the thumb of his right hand against his index finger. Even now that he knew that the dream was just that—a dream, and not real, and impossible for it to _be_ real given the fate Lysandre had ultimately suffered—he still felt shame ice him at the thought of relaying it to the Professor. How was he supposed to tell the Professor that he had imagined Lysandre _living_ there with him? Even if it was just a product of his subconscious—what would the Professor think about that? At least it wasn’t real, and couldn’t _be_ real—Alan hadn’t screwed up _that_ badly, not in real life—but even if it wasn’t, the fact that his mind could dream that up at all . . .

“Hey,” the Professor said softly, as he placed his hand on Alan’s shoulder again. “It’s all right. Whatever it is—was, it’s all right. You don’t have to feel embarrassed, or afraid. I’m right here, and you’re safe. You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to, but I promise that nothing bad will happen if you do. There’s no judgment here.”

“I know,” Alan said, and though his response was automatic, he meant it all the same. It was true, after all; he couldn’t remember a time when the Professor _had_ judged him, couldn’t think of a time when the Professor had expressed even a fraction of the disappointment or disgust that Lysandre had showed him, no matter how badly he deserved it after everything with Flare was said and done. Even now the Professor sat quietly beside him, waiting patiently, and it was for this reason that Alan knew he had to return the favor—had to answer the trust that the Professor had always given him. “I . . . I dreamed that the Director was here. Living here, I mean. He was overseeing the work I was undertaking, just as he did when I still worked under him. I suppose that in the dream, I still did.” Alan’s eyes fell on the manila folder again, and he inclined his head toward it. “In the dream I hadn’t yet finished gathering the day’s data on the vitamin supplement control group. He wasn’t very happy about that.”

“I see,” the Professor said. He was quiet for a moment (and Alan couldn’t bring himself to look over and see the expression on his face), before he said gently, “I can understand that it might be a bit hard to believe since they have yet to recover his body, but I promise you that Lysandre is gone, for good. He could not have survived that attack—and even if he survived the attack, he would not have survived that fall into the ocean. He’s dead, Alan. I promise. All of that is over now. He cannot—he _will not_ hurt you anymore. Even if he did survive somehow, he wouldn’t. I wouldn’t allow him to.”

“I know,” Alan said again, though more to the first point than the second. He wouldn’t burden the Professor with having to protect him. If anything, he would do his damnedest to make it the other way around. He attempted another deep breath against his still-agitated heart palpitations, and before he could stop himself said, “It just doesn’t _feel_ like it is.”

“What do you mean?” the Professor said, but his tone was more coaxing than confused.

Alan wrapped his arms more tightly around himself to try and quell the anxiety fluttering in his stomach, and pressed his lips together for a moment before he said: 

“It feels like I’m—like I’m sitting on borrowed time. Like I’m sitting on the top of an hourglass, and once all the sand ends up in the bottom bulb, that’s the end. I could stymie the flow of sand by working, by doing what I’m supposed t—what I _was_ supposed to do for the Director. If I do that, it puts a temporary stopper against the sand, and holds the end off indefinitely. So long as I’m strong enough to maintain that, the end never comes, bad things never happen, and everyone stays safe. But if I falter, if I stop . . . if I stop, as I have now . . . the sand is constantly running out. The end could come at any moment, and everyone could get hurt or die because I wasn’t strong enough to keep going and protect them. And I know,” he added quickly, before the Professor could interject, “that that isn’t the case anymore. Maybe it—no, it was definitely never the case at all. Everything I did under the Director was wrong. _He_ was wrong. Evil, even, and I served that evil, however unknowingly. I know that now. But it still feels as if there is something more that I am supposed to be doing. It feels like it’s wrong for me to be here, safe and—and—”

“Happy?” the Professor ventured softly.

Alan swallowed hard, but that didn’t unstick his answer from his throat, and so he nodded. The Professor wrapped one arm around Alan’s shoulders in a gentle, but secure, hug.

“I know it’s ridiculous,” Alan said in a low voice. “But I can’t make this feeling go away. I think . . . that’s probably what the nightmares are about.”

“I think that’s a pretty sound assumption,” the Professor said. He was quiet for a moment before he said, “I wish there was something I could say, or do, that would make that feeling go away. I wish there was some solution—scientific or magical or otherwise—that would take this burden from you. If it existed, and I could find it, I would.”

“No, Professor,” Alan said, as he turned at last to meet the Professor’s eyes, “you’ve already done so much for me, you don’t have t—”

“But since I can’t,” the Professor said, and though he didn’t raise his voice at all, Alan still closed his mouth, “then all I can say—all I _want_ to say—is this: You aren’t ridiculous, Alan. You aren’t ridiculous or stupid for the way you feel, and you aren’t a burden, either. You aren’t letting anyone down. And you deserve to be happy, safe, and loved.” The Professor smiled. “Fortunately, we already have those last two things covered. I hope that, given enough time, we can manage the first one, too.”

Not for the first time, Alan was momentarily too overcome with emotion to manage much of anything as a response. He ducked his head, and swallowed as he tried to hold back the tears that stung his eyes, blinking a few times to try and keep them at bay. When he had enough control over himself so that he could speak without blubbering all over the Professor, he said, “Thank you. Thank you so much. It . . . it really means a lot to hear you say that. And it does help. I promise, it—it really does.”

“Any time. I’m always here for you,” the Professor said, and he placed a quick kiss on Alan’s forehead before he stood up. “Now, what do you say we fix up something for lunch, hm? I’m thinking . . . an ice cream sundae buffet?”

Alan couldn’t help but huff a small laugh. Trust the Professor to offer not only a change of subject and lunch, but also a ridiculous amount of Alan’s favorite comfort food _as_ that lunch. “Yeah,” Alan said, and the Professor grinned. “Sounds good. Do we have any of that magic shell chocolate sauce?”

“Of course we do. I think Gabrielle purchased about three bottles of it the last time she went to the grocery store, after she saw that you came home,” the Professor said, and he looped around the couch to head to the kitchen. Alan stood up to follow. “We also have about six different flavors to choose from, and that’s not including the three separate ones that are included in Neapolitan . . .”


End file.
